


The Endeavour Fandom

by LadyAJ_13



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Fandom Analysis, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25692205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: I took a quick look at the prevalent relationships, tags, ratings and categories for the Endeavour fandom from the day it started to now! If that sounds interesting to you - come have a look.
Comments: 32
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think it's clear that I have too much time on my hands! This would be most interesting compared to another fandom, but I don't think I have so much time as to make that possible. If anyone wants to pick up the mantle, please do let me know - I'd be most interested!
> 
> Just a note that I did this all for fun - I'm not a stats expert, I may have made mistakes - but it's as accurate as I could make it. I'm also not pushing any agendas here (I'm not sure what they could possibly be, but adding this disclaimer just in case!) - I just like fiddling about with data. Now that I've revealed myself as a total nerd... enjoy :P
> 
> Edit: 6/8/20 - absolutely HUGE thanks to Drusilla_951 for sending me all the HTML code (and instructions to just copy/paste!) I needed to embed the images within this essay rather than just linking out to Tumblr for each one - it's a vast improvement and I very much appreciate your help!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried but ultimately failed to embed graphs within this - this write-up gives the headlines, but if you are interested in exact details you can follow the links provided to tumblr posts where the graphs are collected.
> 
> Also I want to stress that I am not a trained statistician, and this is basically just me playing about with the AO3 tags! I hope you like it though.

**Intro**

The pilot of Endeavour aired in the UK on the 2nd January 2012, but it took until 26th April 2013 for the first fanwork to be added to AO3.

In this essay (for lack of a better term), I will illuminate the trends of the Endeavour fandom output on AO3, to determine whether fandoms really do evolve over time. I will investigate category (the prevalence of slash, het, and other works), rating (from G to E), the most popular relationships written about, and the most popular tags used.

To show differences over time, works have been split into years, from 26th April 2013 - 25th April 2014 (Year 1), 26th April 2014 - 25th April 2015 (Year 2) and so on. Year 8, therefore, only details 26th April 2020 - 3rd August 2020, but may be referred to as ‘2021’.

  
  


**Category**

Mirroring general fanfiction realities, slash fiction is prevalent in the Endeavour fandom. It is interesting, however, that until Year 6 (ending in April 2019), there were consistently more ‘gen’ fics than slash per year. These two categories remain dominant, together accounting for 75% or more of the total output across the years.

Despite the high proportion of male characters in the source material, heterosexual relationship fics hover around the 10 - 20% mark.

Femslash entered the fandom in Year 3 (ending in April 2016), with a Joan Thursday/Monica Hicks story. It remains a very small proportion - no doubt due to the dearth of female characters - but has seen a small uptick in Year 8 to 3.6%.

[See graph on Tumblr](https://ladyaj-13.tumblr.com/post/625612756262993920/categories-in-the-endeavour-fandom).

**Rating**

Stories in the Endeavour fandom tend to err on the side of ‘family friendly’ with the percentage of fics given either a G or T rating veering between a low of 68.6% in Year 3 and a high of 87.6% in Year 1. The G rating has accounted for more than half of all published fics in three separate years, while the T rating hovers between around one quarter and one third of stories. 

For those who prefer their stories spicier... they may wish to look elsewhere! Explicit rated fics have comprised between 1.6% and 9.9% of total output - although this 9.9% is from Year 8, due to end in April 2021, so may be a sign of things to come.

[See graph on Tumblr](https://ladyaj-13.tumblr.com/post/625612809917595649/endeavour-fandom-story-ratings).

  
  


**Popular Relationships**

This section has been completed under the following terms:

  * Top ten relationships featured, unless there weren’t that many, OR
  * Removed non-Endeavour relationships such as Lewis/Hathaway or wider non-Morseverse
  * Includes both romantic and platonic relationships



[See graphs of top relationships by year on Tumblr](https://ladyaj-13.tumblr.com/post/625612852604108800/endeavour-fandom-relationships).

Year 1 -

Shipping was the name of the game in Year 1, with a marked preference for Jarse (Peter Jakes/Endeavour Morse). It stole the top spot with 34% of all relationship-tagged fics. Playing second fiddle was Morse/Thursday, and at number three was the canon-compliant Morse/Monica.

Interesting to note that this year saw a wider variety of heterosexual relationships than we’re used to, with Morse/Rosaling Stromming, Morse/Alice Vexin and Morse/Susan Fallon also being featured. 

Year 2 - 

Morse/Jakes is still riding high at the number one spot, but losing some of its dominance at only 29% of all relationship-tagged works. In number 2 is the first platonic relationship - Morse & Thursday, and at number three is romantic Morse/Thursday.

This year also sees the start of Morse/Joan and the start of Fred/Win - possibly the root of all the Thursday family feels?

Year 3 - 

This is the year of Morse/Thursday, stealing the top spot from Jarse with 31% of the relationship-tagged stories. In second place is Morse/Jakes, followed by platonic Morse & Thursday. 

It’s also this year that we see Bryndeavour (Morse/Max) for the first time! 

Year 4 -

Morse/Thursday continues in the top spot, with Morse/Jakes in second place. Fred/Win races up the tables to take third.

For the first time we have two platonic relationships making the top ten - Morse & Thursday in fourth, and Morse & Max in sixth (following Morse/Max in fifth). Year 4 is also where we say hello to the decadence, the glitz, the glamour that is Morse/Bixby.

Year 5 - 

We have a joint first place for the first time! It’s father against daughter (ugh, sorry) with Morse/Thursday and Morse/Joan totalling 16 stories apiece. Morse/Jakes falls from the top three for the first (and - spoilers - only) time, being replaced with Morse & Thursday.

Special mention to Reginald Bright & Shirley Trewlove, featured in the top ten here for the only time. Seems Year 5 was the year of the work grandad - they came out level pegging with Morse & Max, Morse/Bixby and Morse/Monica.

Year 6 - 

We have a heterosexual couple in the top spot! Sound the klaxons, the fandom’s gone wonky :D Or maybe we just all love the ‘what could be if we were writing the show’ of Morse/Joan. In second place is Morse/Max, its highest ranking across the years, and Morse/Jakes creeps back up to take third.

Three of the top nine relationships are now platonic, and Morse & Win features for the first time. Well, he does need some looking after!

This is also the last time we see Morse/Thursday featured in the top relationships list.

Year 7 - 

Things got very platonic this year! In top spot is romantic Morse/Jakes, in third is Morse/Max and in fourth is Morse/Joan. All other relationships making the top list were platonic - it seems it was time to give Morse some family and/or friends, in the form of Thursday (second place), Jakes, Max, Joan, Win, Jim and Shirley.

Year 8 - 

Year 8, of course, is only a quarter of the way through, but we’re seeing level pegging for the top spot between Morse/Jakes and new relationship on the block - Box/Fancy! Who will win, when three of the four characters have been written out? Only time will tell. In third place is perennial almost-favourite, Morse/Joan.

This is also the first year we see Morse/Jim Strange and George Fancy/Shirley Trewlove make the top relationships list.

  
  


**Top Tags**

A recurring theme, it seems, is Hurt/Comfort, taking top spot every year bar one… when it was replaced by angst, the usual runner up! These two were joined in Year 4 (2017) by the start of emotional hurt comfort, and later by whump - and specifically Endeavour Morse whump - in Year 7 (2020). If fanfic is a place to fix canon… we seem to be replicating it instead! This is also borne out by common use of episode related, episode tag and missing scene options.

In happier news, both friendship and fluff were commonly featured in the top ten, and other tags that popped up fairly often across the years were case fic, alternate universe and established relationship. 

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

2019 (year 6) was notable for being the only year to include both kissing and first kiss as top tags - someone was getting romantic - and 2021 is definitely the era of the modern AU, no doubt in part due to the Box/Fancy series set in the present day.

Year 6

Year 7

Year 8

[See graphs of top tags by year on Tumblr](https://ladyaj-13.tumblr.com/post/625612890992525312/endeavour-fandom-tags).

  
  


**Lessons learned**

Apart from those above, probably that I have too much time on my hands! I’d be very interested to see how the Endeavour fandom compares to other fandoms, but I’m not sure I have so much time that I can repeat this analysis elsewhere.

The Endeavour fandom seems unusually committed, however (basing this entirely on personal experience, rather than data of other fandoms), with an incredibly high number of works being completed - between 78% (in Year 2, and in Year 8, although that is to be expected given the year is not finished) and 93% - but consistently above the 90% mark.

It was also encouraging to see output grow year on year (bar one), and that the last completed year - Year 7, ending in April 2020 - almost doubled the previous year’s works! Just over three months into Year 8, output has already eclipsed every year prior to Year 6, and if everyone keeps being such busy bees it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect 600 new works for the year as a whole - almost doubling last year’s total again.

[See graphs of total works and works completed on Tumblr](https://ladyaj-13.tumblr.com/post/625612989621518336/published-works-in-the-endeavour-fandom) .

I’d also say the fandom is getting more diverse - to have the tied-top relationship in year 8 _not_ feature the show’s lead is pretty cool. The Thursday family dominance is decreasing, with more stories featuring side characters, and we’re also seeing more smaller pairings coming out such as Ludo/Violetta. There’s also increasingly more foreign language stories from Chinese and Italian authors. The fandom is still small - the total sample analysed was 1211 stories - but active, growing, and large enough for there to be something for everyone. 


	2. Methodology

A few people asked for my methodology in creating the graphs and analysis. First off, again, I’m in no way an expert and I was working exclusively with Google Sheets because I don’t even have Excel… and I have a tendency to ramble.

**Why did I bother?**

Stats have always interested me - those ‘screenshot your top tags’ image challenges on Tumblr and the like. Also, there’s a tumblr post (from at least a year or two ago now) saying about how the fandom has evolved - that people once considered the ‘big names’ aren’t around any more, and that new people have come in. Unless I’m conflating two posts, there’s also a bit about how Peter Jakes is more popular than he used to be, and that it turns out the best move for a character was becoming an offscreen cowboy. (I’d link to the post, but since Jake Gyllenhal met Peter Parker, trying to find a specific Peter Jakes post with the Tumblr search has become… difficult). I’d also noticed the fairly high number of Morse/Thursday stories on AO3 generally, but the fact that few were being published now. 

So those two points were floating around my head and I wanted to know how much they stacked up to reality. I’d been thinking about doing some kind of investigation to find out, and then thanks to Covid my holiday had to be cancelled so I was in need of entertainment (boredom - the catalyst of so much creative - haha - endeavour).

**How did I do it?**

I went to the Endeavour tag on AO3, and dialled back to the first posted work - that gave me the start point. Then, because I knew I wanted to look at things over time, I used that date to split the stories into yearly chunks, using the AO3 ‘filter by post date’ feature. 

That gave me the total number of works per year, then filtering by ‘completed’ gave me the finished works. A quick calculation resulted in the percentage completed, and graphs could be created using the ‘create chart’ feature for both that and the more basic ‘works per year’.

Categories and Ratings

These were pretty simple - within each year, I copied the number of works in each category or rating over into a table in Google sheets - I had a sheet per year to try and keep things organised. From that, I made a pie chart of each year, which calculates the percentage per year of each category or rating. (I could have worked it out without the use of a pie chart, but at that stage I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, or how I wanted to present the data).

After seeing these pie charts, I thought it made more sense - and would be easier to view change over time - to amalgamate all the category results onto one graph, and same for rating. So I created another table with all percentage points per category (or rating) per year, then used the ‘create chart’ feature again to produce the line graphs.

Popular relationships

For relationships, I likewise took the relationships listed by AO3 for the year. There are some problems with this:

  * The first few years didn't have ten relationships tagged
  * I ignored non-Endeavour relationships, e.g. Lewis/Hathaway, but that meant a smaller Endeavour relationship wasn’t in the AO3 list when it should have been
  * This relies on accurate tagging - there’s a possibility, especially early in the fandom, that some Morse & Thursday stories were tagged Morse/Thursday (for example) due to an unfamiliarity with tagging conventions. I didn’t delve into the tags on a story level to confirm accuracy.
  * There’s no differentiation shown in this analysis between a romantic ‘shippy’ story focusing on one pairing and a case fic style story that features and tags, for example, Morse/Monica, Fred/Win and Jakes/Joan all as canon background relationships, and which would therefore show up in the analysis multiple times.
  * Because I’m hampered by using the AO3 filter, which only shows up to ten relationships at a time, not all stories/relationships could be included.



First stage again was to copy across the relationships and the number of works attributed to each. I then used the ‘create chart’ feature to produce the graphs you see. I changed platonic relationships to red after seeing Year 7 and the prevalence of platonic relationships there, as it made it easier to see - and I thought the extra colour was pretty!

I couldn’t see an easy way to amalgamate the data onto one graph, given not all stories are included, and therefore plotting percentages across time - as had been done with category and rating - would be misleading.

Popular tags

As with the popular relationships, this was restricted to the top ten as shown by AO3’s filtering system. This allows us to look at the top trends, but again, has some issues! 

Stories where people group together fandoms (e.g. a story of ‘Tumblr prompts’) will have skewed slightly the ratings, categories and tags analyses; these may apply to the story as a whole, but not the ‘Endeavour’ portion - yet they will be included. However we don’t have so many of these types of works that I thought it would obscure the main trends. I also didn’t exclude crossovers because to my mind, an Endeavour/Life on Mars fic (to use an example I’ve done!) - to my mind - still belongs in the Endeavour fandom. Endeavour also naturally has wishy washy borders as a fandom because of the wider Morseverse. 

As with the relationships, I created tables and then pie charts from the tables for each year. However I realised at a very late stage - literally about to post on Tumblr - that in all the pie charts, only the top ten tags are counted, so the percentages were misleading! (E.g., 21.7% of fics that appeared in the top ten tag list have used ‘hurt/comfort’ - 13 out of 55 works - rather than 21.7% of all 81 works for that year.) I added the ‘number of works’ onto the pie segments to help clarify. 

I tried to create a final graph plotting tag use across time - despite the flaws in percentage issues - and it was so large and complicated that it was utterly unreadable. So I left it with just the pie charts. You win some, you lose some!

**Conclusion**

So… that’s my waffly explanation of what I did. Someone in the comments also said there’s a way you can scrape data from AO3 which, uh… would have solved at least some of the problems I encountered. Oh well. If there is a statistician reading this, you’re probably horrified, but please do feel free to repeat and correct :D


End file.
